For a non-believer you're awfully specific and insistent about what it means to believe. Maybe you don't know anything about it, and if you would like to understand how a believer's mind works you should listen and learn rather than explain to the rest of us how it has to be.
I am merely following the textbook definitions of what belief is. I think, if we are to discuss a subject, we should at least agree on what the terms we use actually mean.
Theistic belief is experiential and emotional: you either have religious experiences that theism helps you to explain or you don't. Empiricism doesn't enter into it any more than it enters into the equation when you fall in love or enjoy a piece of art.
The problem is that theism doesn't so much explain various phenomena as it tells you. And what it usually tells you is "god did it" which isn't much of an explanation.
Empiricism enters into everything that in any shape or form influences the physical world, and since I, until evidence to the contrary surfaces, hold that the physical world is all there is, then logically empiricism enters into everything.
The mechanisms of what we call love as well as why we find certain things appealing or not is also being empirically researched and empirical evidence is building up.
So yes, even love, despite how we romantizise it, can be empirically explained.